Spring has nearly sprung. I’ll be glad when it finally does – wandering round Nottingham in the wet with a stinking cold is not a lot of fun, make no mistake! For this round up, there’s a smattering of the literary, the visually pleasing and the crafty…

Scribo, Ergo, Sum

I write, therefore I am… To many budding writers, this would be a mantra to live by, and that was certainly the case for Adam Charles, whose novel would lie unwritten in his head no longer. But after sending it out to publishers and receiving knockback after knockback, Adam decided that this state of affairs would not do. The problem was that amongst all the rejection slips, there was nothing there to help him hone his craft – no indication of what might have gone wrong, and what might turn yesterday’s pulp fiction into tomorrow’s modern classic. In his own words:

A couple of years ago I eventually hit upon an idea. If the professionals can’t tell me, then how can technology help me to find out whether my work is any good or not? I trawled the internet but couldn’t find anything that I could use for these objectives. This is where the first seed began to grow for our new website for unpublished writers – www.iwritereadrate.com

Adam has written a great article over on LeftLion about the genesis of his site and the thinking behind it. It looks to be one more great resource to tap into if you are struggling to get your zom-rom-com-meta-novel written in the second person out to publication.

Logogo!

You may have seen on Twitter over this week that Nott Tuesday have a new logo in the offing. It’s a highly recognisable graphic, and I especially like the visual pun of the bright sparks, reflecting the prevalence of talent in our fine city. Congrats to them and to Touch Design, the company behind the updated logo!

UPDATE! Thanks to Nick Barker for clarifying that this is not, in fact, the final logo. Nott Tuesday are running a logo competition to try to settle on the best identity for them – check out the Nott Tuesday site to see what else comes in, and let them know what your thoughts are!

Knitwear? Kneewear!

Ok, that one is pretty tenuous, sorry about that. What it refers to is a lecture you might be interested in if you’re a crafty type. Professor of Knitting Tilak Dias is presenting “Evolutionary Pathways of Knits: From Fashion Knitwear to Medical and Smart Textiles” 6pm next Monday, 28th Feb, at NTU’s Newton Building.

Phil Williams

The last original Creative Nottingham team member, Phil lives in a nest in the server room at Confetti, where he subsists on a diet of network cables and the tears of frustrated IT users. When not listening to terrible pop music on infinite repeat, he enjoys discussing the state of the videogame industry in the UK. He can be found @phil_will.

http://www.nickpoint.co.uk Nick Barker

Hi Phil,

Thank for the Nott Tuesday logo writeup. This logo idea is not necessarily going to be the final logo. It is our 1st logo idea. Feedback on it has been great so far.